City workers removed a body in a black bag from the smoldering rubble of a Queens house that exploded early Thursday, after police said they responded to a 911 call for a domestic violence incident at the home.
Firefighters had spent all morning carefully digging through the home's charred remnants with a backhoe. Finally, around 11:30 a.m., one of the crew members told the operator to stop: They had found human remains.
NYPD officials said they could not immediately identify the body. They earlier said the only person still unaccounted for in the home was 50-year-old Anroop Parasram — the man they said was spotted on surveillance footage entering the house around 2:30 a.m. with two large black bags containing canisters with unknown contents.
Police said several officers went to the home on 130th Street and 109th Avenue in South Ozone Park around 2:45 a.m. because a woman had called saying a male relative was intoxicated and threatening his family with a knife.
Officials said Parasram’s wife, daughter and two grandchildren lived there, and all but his wife were able to quickly escape the house. He began threatening his wife with a knife, police said, but she was then also able to escape safely.
The wife met responding officers outside and gave them a key to the apartment so they could go look for Parasram, NYPD Assistant Chief Christopher McIntosh said at a news conference at the scene Thursday morning.
Body-worn camera footage released by police shows what happened next: Just as officers were about to enter the home through the front door, a fiery blast knocked them off their feet.
The officers regrouped, and seeing none of them was badly hurt, went back to the front door, where the video shows them carrying several young children to safety.
All the officers were taken to the hospital to be treated for minor burns, and one suffered a laceration to his head that will require stitches, according to the assistant chief.
“We got very lucky today. This could have turned out really differently,” McIntosh said.
At an unrelated press conference later Thursday morning, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said all the injured officers had been released from Jamaica Hospital. She said the fire had been put out and the explosion's cause was still under investigation.
“We believe that the suspect in the initial domestic dispute set fire to the location with an unknown liquid accelerant,” Tisch said.
She added that police were inspecting a vehicle near the house they believe Parasram drove.
Firefighters at the scene of the South Ozone Park home that exploded on April 30, 2026
As neighbors huddled together watching the recovery work from across the street, city medical examiners photographed evidence and placed a white sheet over the body the workers removed from the rubble.
“I’m sad, I’m upset, I’m just kind of confused about everything,” said Jessica Irvin, who has lived on the block since she was 2. “A lot of people have been displaced.”
The fire consumed the home and drew 300 firefighters to the scene, FDNY Chief John Esposito said at the scene. The blaze was so heavy that firefighters could not go inside and the house eventually collapsed, he added.
Neighboring buildings were slightly damaged, and 16 people were displaced, Esposito said.
McIntosh said police had responded to domestic incidents at the home numerous times within the past year. Police said Parasram’s wife had filed three orders of protection against him in the past, but the most recent one expired in 2024.
Neighbors said they had seen police activity at the home in the past, but were not sure what it was about. Yashoda Singh, who lives in the house next door with her three children, said she occasionally heard screaming and fighting, though she did not know exactly where it was coming from.
Singh said the loud explosion woke her up early Thursday. When she looked outside, she saw the flames.
“I just grabbed the kids and their jackets and I rushed out,” she said, adding that she didn’t have time to put their shoes on.
First responders work to recover a body from the rubble of the home.
Singh said she and her family have to figure out where they’ll be staying after the explosion. The windows on the top floor of her house were completely blown out, and there were holes in the charred wall she shared with the neighboring home.
Singh said her children are traumatized by the incident.
“They keep asking me what happened. My 3-year-old keeps asking if I can take her home,” she said. “I said, ‘Baby, we don’t have a home.’”
This story has been updated with additional details.
